Throughout the past several decades, language has definitely begun to descend down a long spiral towards complete degradation of language. The question is which devolved first, language or culture? Orwell points out in his essay, “Politics and the English Language,” a sort of chicken or egg dilemma between the devolution of our language and the devolution of our culture. I personally believe that the decline of our culture came first; then through laziness, and even refusal to perform tasks that were not entertaining, people caused the decline of the English language.
As Neil Postman described in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, we are now in the Age of Show Business, in which Americans use entertainment for almost everything that they do. Whether they are learning, engaging in politics, or even worshiping, Americans use entertaining methods to participate in every aspect of the world around them. This type of interaction can be very dangerous because, as is shown through American culture, people have begun to reject anything that is not entertaining to them.
An example of this mindset is the illusion that students from the past few generations have that everything, including school, should and will be entertaining. This disillusionment has lead Americans to shy away from occasions that are not entertaining, and often become lazy when faced with unamusing tasks.
Every teacher knows that the more amusing and the more simple they can make their lesson, the better chance that their students will pay attention. For example, if the teacher implements throwing a ball from person to person during a class discussion, students will be more inclined to participate because the activity feels like a game.
However, not every task can be entertaining. Such an example is an essay or a book assignment. In this day and age, the electronics that got us into the cycle of entertainment are what further people’s intellectual decline by providing an “easy way out” of schoolwork. When completing reading assignments, students will often compromise learning the meaning, tone, and literary devices in books by choosing the online summaries, simply because they are “easier” and “less boring”. This exclusion leads to children not knowing how to properly use these literary terms and tones when they later are required to write a paper of their own.
Orwell explains in “Politics and the English Language,” another mistake that students make when writing; people will often add things such as pretentious words and worn out metaphors to their essays. Instead of furthering the intended purpose of the student, these “tools” only end up confusing the reader (often the poor teacher that has to decipher several of these essays) in a circle of meaningless words, as well as prove that the author of that paper did not have a very good grasp on what they were writing. Orwell goes on further to explain that people use these cop outs because they are trying to write their essays without putting much thought into them, “If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences…” (Orwell 8).
This recent decline in language just goes to show that presenting non-entertaining material, especially school related things, as entertainment is very detrimental to the evolution of our English language.
